Reconstruction or Rebellion?

Five years ago, in April, the bloodiest war in American history ended, but have the moral grounds for which the Union fought really been achieved?

The South has remained nearly as rebellious as it was during the Civil War. As early as November 1865, Mississippi passed the first Black Code. Black Codes are nothing more but a legal slavery now. In 1866 one Georgian said, “The blacks eat, sleep, move, live, only by the tolerance of the whites, who hate them. The blacks own absolutely nothing but their bodies; their former masters own everything, and will sell them nothing. If a black man draws even a bucket of water from a well, he must first get the permission of a white man, his enemy… If he asks for work to earn his living, he must ask it of a white man; and the whites are determined to give him no work, except on such terms as will make him a serf and impair his liberty.” As a result of the South’s extreme opposition to reform the Union Congress passed the Reconstruction Act on March 2, 1867. The legislation split up the South into five military districts, each commanded by a Union general and supported by Union soldiers, almost twenty-thousand. Congress, in rebellion of Johnson’s wishes, passed stricter conditions for the readmission of the Southern States. States that had been in rebellion were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and guarantee that their state constitutions gave full suffrage for their former adult male slaves. The Fourteenth Amendment gave former slaves their rights as citizens. Outraged Southerners eventually complied with the orders and just recently all of the state governments have been reorganized. The Southerners themselves are vehemently opposed to these reforms; in 1866 the Ku Klux Klan was founded in Tennessee. The Ku Klux Klan represented all of the rebellion still in the hearts of Confederates wearing Union colors. The Ku Klux Klan now enforces its own law in the night, but Congress is working on legislation to stop it, where the state governments will not.

For the first time in history black statesmen are taking their place in state governments and legislatures. At state conventions, required by the Reconstruction Act, blacks sat down with whites to work out new state constitutions. No black governors have yet been elected; many other prominent positions have been filled by newly freed blacks. However whites resent these new political powers granted to the blacks. The Ku Klux Klan does everything it can to prevent blacks from voting and holding office. A popular southern song reflects the spirit of rebellion in the South:

And I don’t want no pardon for what I was or am,

I won’t be reconstructed and I don’t give a damn.

Some white northerners have tried to help in the modernization of the south, but their efforts are hated by northern southerners. Dubbed “carpet baggers” for the bags that they carry their belongings with, these northern businessmen seek to industrialize the south. Native Southerners resent the hand of the North interfering with their own affairs, even if it is from the private sector.

Reconstruction in the South has made both great bounds and recessions. While blacks are free, and some rights are protected by amendment to the constitution and newly written state constitutions, they are still little more than slaves. Southerners will do everything in their power to oppress people they once owned, and the end of bigotry in the south will be a long time in the coming.

Signing Off

-Franis LeQuiff